What Is a Professional Account on Instagram?

Since its creation on October 6th of 2010, Instagram has not only become a hub for over one billion personal accounts worldwide, but a key market for online businesses and other organizations seeking to promote online. In 2020, 71% of businesses in the US claimed that they use Instagram for either a part or a major aspect of their business. But what exactly does it mean to have your business on Instagram as a professional account?

how to make a professional instagram account

Types of Instagram Accounts

When you create an account on Instagram, there are three options of accounts to choose from. A personal account, a creator account, or a business account. The second two are both professional Instagram accounts.

Creator Professional Accounts

Creator Accounts were created for people who are considered public figures, content producers, artists, and influencers. These creators get several new tools through this type of account such as follower and activity trackers, demographic data of followers, and a creator studio dashboard.

Business Professional Accounts

Business Accounts are tailored for businesses, freelancers, and designers who are seeking to broaden their customer base on social media. Some of the features that are exclusive to these types of accounts are Instagram Insights, ranking requests, and additional business labels and messaging that is not available to personal accounts.

Creating an Instagram Business Account

Creating a professional Instagram account is a pretty simple procedure. All you need to do is get out your smartphone or other mobile device, find your Facebook business page, and follow the next six steps:

  1. On the app, tap on the three lines in the top right-hand corner.
  2. Click on the Settings button.
  3. Select account and then switch to a professional account.
  4. It will ask whether you want a creator or business account. This is where you click and choose business and then hit continue.
  5. Connect your professional Instagram account to your Facebook business page.
  6. Fill in your public contact information so that your customers can easily get in contact with you. Then save it!

instagram success

Breaking Down the Benefits of Using a Professional Instagram

While we listed some of the benefits of having either professional Instagram account, you might not know what Instagram Insights and ranking requests are or how they can benefit your company; so let’s break it down.

Instagram Insights

This feature provides additional information including insights into your followers and your posts. You can also rank posts by engagement and identify which posts are helping you grow. The power of data and insight into your social media strategy is limitless with this tool at your disposal. It not only breaks down what kind of audience you are attracting to your business, but also marketing tips that help you target other groups of people that you want coming to your page. This tool is broken down into three small pages: Activity, Audience, and Content.

Activity

Under the Activity tab, the two Instagram Insights you can retrieve are Interactions and Discovery. Interactions are the total number of actions taken on your Instagram account in the last week. You can see the number of times your profile was visited and how often your contact links were clicked on. This would include your website link, email address, and phone number. The Discovery set looks at your profile’s overall performance using Reach and Impressions. Reach is the number of unique people that saw your posts. Impressions are the total number of times your post was viewed. This tool helps see what posts and links are bringing the most benefit to your account and helps you tailor your future posts to boost awareness of your brand.

Audience

The Audience tab provides you with a deeper understanding of who your followers are. The four data sets that will matter to you in the Audience tab are gender, age range, top locations, and followers. Knowing more about your audience will help you refine your social media strategy. Make sure to note when your top activity time is on your page to maximize posting and commenting during that peak. Having a better idea of the time and location of your followers will help you maximize your engagement with them.

Content

The Content tab contains insight on your photo/video content, stories, and any promotional posts. It has three subsets that are Feed, Stories, and Promotions. The feed set shows all your content and you can individually click on it to view the metrics of that specific post. At a quick glance, you will retrieve the total interactions, engagements, and discoverability of that Instagram post. Also within the Content tab, there is the Stories set which includes Instagram insight into how your stories are doing. Find out data about how many people exited your story, replies to it, and the number of taps that users went through your story. You can learn a lot about how your advertising campaigns are performing and meeting your business goals. Understanding your social media is essential to boosting your marketing and having a more prominent professional Instagram.

instagram ads

How Much Does a Professional Instagram Cost?

Now that you understand what a business account on Instagram is and how you can use it, you want to know how much this is going to cost you. You will be delighted to know that creating and running a professional business account on Instagram is free! There are no charges for registration or for continuing to run your account day-to-day. The only thing that could cost your business money is Instagram ads.

Instagram Ads

While it is not a requirement when making a professional Instagram account to purchase and run advertisements, it is something they highly recommend. With statistics stating that 70% of Instagram users are more likely to purchase a product online versus over others, it’s never been a better time to get your brand names out there in as many ways as possible.

Cost of Instagram Ads

The cost of Instagram ads is depending on several factors. In general, the price will depend on six factors, but there are two major ones. Those would be bid amount and your target audience.

Bid Amount

Instagram ad prices are affected by Instagram’s bidding system. As an advertiser, you will set an amount of money you are willing to spend either each day or over the entirety of your campaign. The average CPC, or cost per click, is typically $0.70-$1.00 on Instagram. This means for every user that clicks on your advertisement, you pay Instagram the amount set during negotiations. Make sure to keep your rate competitive with other businesses on Instagram because they do have the right to reject your offer if your CPC is too low.

Your Target Audience

The target audience you are advertising to has a big impact on what your CPC will cost. Your target audience’s CPC cost varies based on the country, age range, and gender of your target audience. If you want your Instagram ad cost to decrease you might want to consider slightly adjusting who you are wanting to target with your professional Instagram account. You should not completely change your target demographic to lower your CPC however. You could change a couple of things to save some money such as expanding the generality of your target audience. This would be like aiming to advertise to both men and women. Or you could aim at a different age group that might not be the prime buyers of your product, but still would attract their attention.

likes on instagram

More Ways to Benefit Your Business on Instagram

If all the above isn’t convincing enough to get you to switching over, consider these other benefits that come with moving your business into a professional Instagram account.

CTA (Call to Action)

One of the smaller tools that you can utilize on a professional Instagram account is the Call to Action button. This gives your users an easy way to reach out to you by phone number, email, or general directions to your business. The call to action button appears at the top of your profile right under your Instagram bio and should be eye-catching to attract attention when people visit your account.

Story Links

With a business account you can add links in your Instagram stories. This gives you a huge opportunity to send your audience straight to your products and landing pages on your site. You can even directly connect to Facebook to allow customers to find you on both forms of social media and run your Instagram ads through your business account on Facebook.

professional instagram account

Sharing Your Business One Like at a Time

There’s never been a better time to get your business online and on social media, so don’t miss your opportunity to spread awareness of your brand and invite the millions of users on Instagram and Facebook to see the hard work you put into your business.

FAQs

  • What are Instagram ads?
  • How much do Instagram ads cost?
  • What is a professional account on Instagram?
  • Are there different types of professional accounts on Instagram?
  • How to use a professional account on Instagram?

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